


This pain will not make you stronger

by intravenusann



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Kylo Ren Angst, Kylo Ren Backstory, Kylo Ren-centric, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 12:27:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5785312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intravenusann/pseuds/intravenusann
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four perspectives on the fall of Kylo Ren: his father's, his own, his enemy's, and his mother's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "(T)hose who survive a calamity are by definition the fittest. But it is not the calamity that made them so."
> 
> — [What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Weaker](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/insight-therapy/201008/what-doesnt-kill-you-makes-you-weaker)

Han doesn’t need the damn Force to know his son is in this hell pit of a structure. He’d already forgotten the name of whatever they were trying to blow up, but he knew he wouldn’t be stopped.

But he hesitated.

Long ago, Han had indexed all his failures as a father. Every time he had raised his voice or barked orders at a child — only a few years old, who was just curious and not trying to kill them all by disconnecting something important. The sips of wine he would give him so he would sleep even because they were on a new planet and here it was night and a few hours ago on another planet it had been day. And it had been day for many, many, many hours.

But this isn’t what he thinks of, looking for the tall shadow of his son in a structure that’s all tall shadows.

He thinks of a dark-haired, soft-faced toddler with a habit of falling asleep with both hands clutching hard to Chewie’s hair.

“We could cut it off.”

The shake of a head.

“Yeah, you’re right, let the kid sleep.”

Big, dark eyes staring at him as though a four-year-old could understand the full gravity of raiders boarding the Falcon.

“Keep your head down and don’t make a sound until I come back. Do you understand, Ben? Not a sound.”

Leia telling him to take him.

“I don’t know what to do with a kid, Leia. He doesn’t even eat food or talk.”

“People are trying to kill me, Han.”

Kissing her, that time, wasn’t enough to stop her tears or her anger.

Saying, “Make sure she sees her son again” to her escort. What was her name? Sara? Shara?

“Don’t worry, sir, I’ve got one too. He’s about three now. He stays with my parents.”

This kid growing into his nose, but Han’s certainty that he never really would because Han’s father never looked like he grew into his nose. His mother’s hair dark as the space between stars and so curly.

Leia saying, “My mother had eyes like that, dark, dark eyes.”

Han wondering what else Ben got from his grandparents, even then.

Whatever happened to Shara? Didn’t Leia have to attend a funeral? It was before they sent Ben to...

“Is it true, Dad? What they said? That you’re a thief?”

A hand clutching the fabric of his pants beside his knee. The sound of a thumb planted so deep in a tiny mouth.

“He’s going to ruin his teeth doing that. Come here, Ben! Come give your mommy a hug.”

Wailing hysterical tears. “Daddy!”

Because he’s four now and maybe too old for this level of reaction, but he doesn’t remember her. It’s been that long, maybe too long. If there hadn’t been a way. If they’d waited.

But he thinks of that crying child who reached out for him, terrified of being held by anyone else.

There is evil in Ben, but Han still believes there is also the boy who cried because he didn’t recognize his mother. He wouldn’t recognize her now. It’s been too long.

“Ben!”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He has a teacher, but it's not his uncle. He has a name, but it's not Ben.

His mother escorts him to the hands of his uncle, Luke Skywalker. He looks between their faces and sees nothing of himself.

“I can’t treat him any differently than I would any other student,” his uncle says.

These words would hurt him, if he did not already carry other words inside his mind.

“You have a true gift, young man. I have not met anyone with potential like yours in a very long time.”

The Jedi Luke Skywalker tries to offer him more of the same lies he has heard from his mother and father already. No one speaks the name Vader. When he asks his uncle if it is possible to use the Force to control the actions of others, to read thoughts, he is told that it is not. But he already knows this is untrue.

“Where did you get an idea like that?” Luke asks.

He feels hands on his shoulders, on his neck, on his face when he thinks of his real teacher.

His real learning progresses parallel to what Luke tries to teach him. He is not adept at delicate uses of the Force, but the thoughts of others, their identities, their feelings are easier to read than their faces. He knows when someone is lying to him. He is never wrong.

His mother visits him, but never his father.

“Where is Han?” he asks, each time.

“He couldn’t make it,” she says, and she’s lying. The temptation rests within him, a leaf floating on the surface of water, to _find out_. But she would sense him. He does not have a subtle touch with the Force.

As the years pass, however, he becomes grateful for this. His mother can no more sense his lies than her brother can. But his father, weak as he is — he knows that he could not conceal himself from his father. There is a wretched familiarity between them which his teacher reminds him of when he cannot restrain himself or when the challenge of his training feels too great.

He researches in Empire archives where kyber crystals may still be found, how to install a crystal in a lightsaber, how to remove one.

The next step of his training is to arm himself and he is already designing his weapon inside the safe confines of his head.

When the Jedi Luke Skywalker finally notices his exceptional abilities, he says nothing. He offers no praise for his efforts, but instead instructs him to help the others. He does, because he must not let on. He must restrain himself.

He sends a message to his mother, asking to visit her.

“Will Han be there as well?” he asks.

The hologram of his mother’s face looks away from him. “I don’t know, Ben. I don’t know.”

He goes and hopes that his father will not be there, because he has planned out an elaborate lie within his mind that Han Solo would unravel in an instant.

But Han Solo is not in the Hosnian System when he arrives. He smiles and embraces his mother, kisses her cheeks. He weaves his first lie and within a day is at the feet of his teacher. With a hand against the bare skin of his neck, he learns more than he ever could from Empire archives.

Within the week, he departs in search of a crystal to resonate with the storm inside his mind. It is not in the ice cave that Luke described, but it is certainly what could be called a cave.

In the dark, he finds the abandoned weapon. He lifts it from where it’s fallen so violently that it slams into the metal beside him. He picks it and looks it over. Then, with the Force more than his own hand, he breaks it open. The kyber crystal burns through his glove and though he holds it more with the Force than with his flesh it burns him as well.

It is red, blood red, a ruby, a burning coal, a dying star.

“We cannot risk that your conflicted state would taint a crystal,” his teacher says. “Besides, this piece has history. Do you know how many Jedis’ lives were ended by it? No, of course not, but I will teach you.”

In the body he builds for it, the crystal makes a poor fit. But it lights up like a torch when he turns it on, a roaring powerful thing. It shakes in his hand, or his hand shakes holding it.

“You will complete your lesson as I have instructed you to, won’t you, Kylo?”

He turns off lightsaber. His hand still shakes.

“Yes, my lord.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this made me feel gross.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In all the worlds that General Hux has seen, he has never met a creature he despised quite as much as he does Kylo Ren.

With the transport’s route clearly mapped out and both shields and cloaking activated, Hux cuts the thrust. The ship does not stop — it slips forward in space with nothing to truly stop its momentum.

He rises from his seat.

A unique opportunity has presented itself to him and he can restrain himself no longer.

Kylo of the Knights of Ren cowers in the far corner of the transport like the wounded animal that he is. The smell of blood and burnt flesh infects the hermetic atmosphere of this First Order transport, meant for the lowest of combat troopers and therefore lacking anything like comfort. The lights flicker, turning Kylo’s ravaged face into a series of grotesque shadows.

“Don’t,” he snarls.

“You are injured,” Hux says. “Supreme Leader would not suffer me to live if you bled to death on our journey.”

They stare at each other and Hux thinks of nothing more than a feral cat that has been savaged by some stronger animal, hissing even as it slowly dies. No doubt, Kylo could claw him yet. But Hux will not survive a meeting with Snoke and only Kylo’s corpse.

“I can smell blood,” Hux says. “Your burns shouldn’t bleed, should they? The plasma cauterizes as it cuts.”

“A blaster,” Kylo says. “A bowcaster.”

“A _bowcaster_?” Hux repeats.

How rich it is to know that a master of the Knights of Ren who stalked the halls of Hux’s Starkiller has been laid so low by a wookie, a traitor, and a scavenger. Hux lost everything with Starkiller. With their forces decimated, he contemplates the reality that Snoke may yet have him executed. Likely by Kylo, which would be a humiliation. He always was, Hux felt, a blade to hang over his throat.

But for this moment, Hux can have that blade cut low.

“Show me the wound,” he says. He smiles as Kylo struggles to move. The burns and gouges from his battle with the scavenger and the traitor must cause him some pain as he moves his arms.

Hux expects Kylo to bare only that portion of his body which is actively bleeding, if he shows Hux anything at all. Instead he begins to peel away his clothing in stilted, awkward motions. Hux hears tearing as fabric that has burned into Kylo’s flesh rips away his wounds. Now there is blood, fresh and dripping down white skin.

The sight of blood leeching from the edges of Kylo’s cooked flesh makes Hux’s lip curl. He swallows. In the cockpit, there is a simple survival kit. Nothing that could save a dying man, but there are bandages. Hux reviews syringes and bottles of pain-numbing medications with gloved fingers, but he only takes the bandages.

He stands over Kylo, who strips to reveal a body as battered as the kyber crystal powering his saber. Damp, matted hair hides the wound on Kylo’s face, but there is a gouge down his shoulder and arm, as well as burns that look like brands on his shoulders and chest. The bowcaster wound is the largest, really and it oozes. The edges are ragged, partially burned and partially torn. It looks larger than it is, Hux realizes, as much of the edge is simply bruising.

He could hand Kylo the bandages and be done with him, go back to the cockpit and restart the thrusters.

Instead, he goes down on one knee.

“You can’t even move your arm enough to bandage yourself,” Hux says. “Can you?”

“Silence,” Kylo snarls. For a flickering moment, Hux can’t breathe. His tongue feels sealed to the roof of his mouth and the air is trapped in his lungs.

“Do what you must,” Kylo says.

Hux reaches out and shoves two fingers as deep into the wound on Kylo’s side as he can. Kylo screams. His power throws Hux back against the cockpit door. He cannot breathe. He can feel parts of this throat crunching in Kylo’s grasp.

“Can you operate a transport?” he thinks, as hard as he can. “Or will you die out here?”

Kylo lets him go. Hux coughs and retches, gasping desperately for air. Then he begins to laugh.

“I have to take you to Snoke alive,” he says. “But until we get there, you’re at my mercy.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She has her son back, but pieces of him are missing.

He feels her arrive, senses her like a beacon of light on a barren planet. He wants to flee. But there is nowhere for him to go. The Force fills her as it fills him, informs them of each other.

Even the Force cannot fully prepare the man who was Kylo Ren for the sight of his mother’s face.

Time has lightened the brown in her hair to grey. It has creased the skin of her face and hands. It has thinned her lips and thickened her waist. But time has been much kinder to her than to him.

His dark cape cannot hide the sunken shape where his shoulder and arm used to be. He has no mask to hide the scar across his face.

When she sent him away for the last time, he came to her shoulder. Now she returns to him, so many years later, and he towers over her.

His knees grow weak. He lets himself fall. He bows his head to avoid looking at her, so he does not have to see her looking at him. His back curves. He bows under the weight of her scrutiny.

The Light is within him, dredging up memories of her in the days before she sent him away. She breathes now as she breathed then, shakily and wet.

In his memory of her, she rubs her eyes and puts an arm around his shoulders. He is smaller than her and can be held.

“Why are you crying?” he asks his mother.

“I was thinking of my father,” she tells him.

She tells him a story he has already heard about Bail Organa and Alderaan. By then, he knew, but now at his mother’s feet he finally understands. She was not lying to him, as Snoke had said, she was only telling him her truth. That she had loved and been loved by this man more than her own father.

She cried for him and for Alderaan, for all the people she had loved but for many she had never known.

His own tears burn his eyes and leave him shaking, congested, coughing. He is weak in spirit and in form. In Light and in Dark, he sought a strength he lacked, but it is in neither. He has both in him and no strength at all.

Tears will not give life to the people he has slain. There is no power in the Force that will turn death into life, nothing that can piece back together planets or even something so small as a child’s body.

The futility of his weeping does not stop him.

She touches his arm, reaches for his hand. When he shrinks away from her, she grabs him firmly.

“Ben,” she says, as though he were still a child, as though Ben Solo had ever become a man, as though the man crumpled at her feet has anything in common with that boy.

“That’s not my name,” he says, his voice thick with tears and quiet.

“I won’t call you by that other name,” she says, “the one Snoke gave you. I won’t use it.”

“Don’t. That’s not my name,” he repeats. “I don’t have a name. I am no one.”

If only that girl, that scavenger, Rey had sliced off his head instead of his arm. Instead she left him as a dead thing without the freedom of death. There is not enough Light in the universe to clear out all that is Dark within him. There is no use to the power he has that does not cause hurt. Snoke made of him a weapon to be wielded until its destruction. And now he is destroyed, of no use to anyone. He is less than nothing, a blight in the delicate fabric of the Force.

“No,” she says, her tender hand holding his large one so tightly the bones ache. “You are my son.”

**Author's Note:**

> Send me hate mail at jeffgoldblumsmulletinthe90s.tumblr.com


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